Archive for the ‘Documentary’ Category

Back to slowly updating my blog. This one’s from when Dia and Jeremy tied the knot last winter in 2012. I visited them last week, and Dia now is over 4 months pregnant! Yay. So this long overdue blog post is a little tribute to their love, and to the awesome baby girl they will be raising together in Park Slope – and (if they’ll let us) with help from friends and family, myself included. Congratulations, D+J!

The photos, by the way – these two wanted a quiet, intimate ceremony, so we started out the day with Dia and Jeremy getting ready at their home in Park Slope. It was a cold rainy day and we were running late, but we managed to catch a few just outside their apartment. Then we hopped in a cab over to the Islamic Cultural Center on the Upper East Side, where we were joined by some of Dia’s family and good friends, since both of their families live mostly overseas. It was my first time photographing inside a mosque – a beautiful space, as you can see. And an equally lovely ceremony – although, as I remember, a band of interlopers in the form of a tour group got to witness it as well! “Same time tomorrow,” Jeremy joked with them afterwards.

Speaking of Jeremy and Dia’s signature sense of humor, I don’t know if you can see it but the form being filled out in the photos lists as Dia’s dowry one “Le Creuset Cooking Pot (Large).” You guys.

Seriously, though. Getting to witness and be a part of something like this is maybe the biggest perk of being a photographer.

Oh, I have so many feelings about Costa Rica and what that place and my time there means to me, but most of them are hard to articulate with words, or even at all. My trip there last month, for a big (big!) family reunion, was my first time back in a year and a half, and it was really the first time I’ve ever gone back intending to use my camera.

For a lot of reasons, these are possibly the most personal photos I’ve ever taken, in every sense. It took a bit of courage to post these, so I hope you enjoy.

Back in April Sid, who’s (among other things) a member of the M6, a vocal ensemble that interprets the work of Meredith Monk, contacted me about doing some PR photography for the group. I said yes, and that I wanted to stick around for rehearsals too.

And so on two hot afternoons in May I climbed up five sets of stairs to take a peek into the world of the M6. The six of them – Sasha, Sid, Emily, Holly, Toby and Peter – get together about 1x a month. The music is only partially notated, and so a lot of rehearsal time is /thinking/ about the music – trying things out, debating how it should sound and why, and scribbling notes on the sheet music. I really liked watching the dynamic between all of them.

Amazingly, this is a side project for all involved (main involvements range from singing opera to choreographing dance). The M6 is 4 years in the making, even though coordinating upcoming rehearsals is almost an hour-long process each time.

Sid was telling me that the composer, in her 60s now, has been thinking a lot about how her work will outlive her. She’s been the main performer of her work, but now she’s now spending more time collaborating with people who want to help her interpret her work, like the M6. Here and there you also catch little glimpses of the loft and Meredith’s presence in the photos.

The premise: to spend 2 days, 2 nights, and a few hours on either end getting to know Las Vegas without leaving the Strip. Pretty dumb premise, right?

The backstory is that a friend randomly called a few months back and asked if I wanted to hang out in Las Vegas on the cheap for a couple of days in March. James and I met on an epic backpacking trip a long time ago; he lives in Oklahoma and we don’t get to hang out too often; plus random trips are cool, so the answer was yes. And though Las Vegas is absolutely last on my list of places in the U.S. to pay to get on a plane and fly out to to spend time in, it’s interesting for all the reasons I’m not interested in going there. So on top of hanging out, I took on the project of trying to figure out Las Vegas, and what it’s like to live there. I scribbled down field notes in my journal, pored through publications, and talked up the locals, barely scratching the surface obviously. It was a lot of fun though, so I’m inspired to do it for every place I travel to from now on.

I did more writing than photographing on this trip. By design, Las Vegas is exhibitionist and camera-ready, and our wanderings mostly limited to the Strip – so it was a challenge for me to take photos that were fundamentally Las Vegas but which didn’t feel like tourism ads. The more I think about it, the more I’d love to go back to LV for a longer period of time to do just that. Funny how that works out.

These two images sum up the Las Vegas Strip for me.

Fundamentally, what Las Vegas offers its visitors:The nothingness that is just one street off of the Strip behind the Wynn Hotel, like walking behind a movie set:

And then we’ve got: me and the Strip, a crazy sunset (real colors!) and the mountains I would have loved to explore, and late afternoon light on my friend James.